Funnily enough, this plant popped up near where the opium poppies popped up ~ was there once a narcotics garden here? What else might pop up??!!

Though in saying that, this particular variety of tobacco is more decorative than smoke-ative. Unlike my other tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum) that I actually did plant, looking glorious at the moment with it coming into flower..

If I actually had intentions of smoking the stuff I would nip that flower off and do some serious research on how I would cure it. To be honest, when I got the plant I thought that I could perhaps dry a few leaves and have a sneaky ciggy now and then (I’m an ex-smoker) but lo and behold it’s not as simple as that unless of course I wanted to poison myself. Without curing your tobacco the nicotine content in the leaves is so sky high you would make yourself seriously sick if you smoked them. We have a case here of my laziness ( I can’t be bothered curing etc) saving my health! But they (the leaves) do make a killer insecticide apparently. I learnt all this from the website here called Leaf Only.

Nicotiana tabacum

So at this stage I’m growing tobacco purely for interest/ornamental purposes, so it’s kind of cool that I have two varieties now!